


it will be just like you were never gone (if you ever come back)

by wherehopelies



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/F, I had feelings, sorry idk why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 16:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14773182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wherehopelies/pseuds/wherehopelies
Summary: "The graph of pain is nonexistent, Emily reminds herself. Because math makes sense, if not to her then at least to someone, but this pain isn’t measurable, doesn’t follow any type of pattern or equation. If x equals time passed, then y… Why did Beca leave?" Even Bemily is angst is soft amirite





	it will be just like you were never gone (if you ever come back)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the script's "if you ever come back"

The day after is hard, but it’s not the hardest. It’s like one of those nights, so often in the weeks leading up to then, that Beca’d stayed late at the studio.

The second day is harder, but it’s not the hardest. It’s like Beca went on vacation for a short time and couldn’t call because there wasn’t service.

The third day - it should be the hardest, Emily thinks. The third day is always the hardest right? - the third day is unbearable… but it’s still not the hardest.

Emily can’t gauge which day is the hardest. Each new day seems to get harder.

_Pain and recovery aren’t linear, Emily_ , Stacie tells her.

_Then show me the pain graph_ , Emily wants to shoot back. Get out our old textbooks and show me what it looks like. A parabola? To get exponentially worse until it breaks, and the pain goes back down at the same rate it went up? Sine or cosine, maybe? An ebbing and flowing, up and down and up and down?

No, Emily wants to argue. Maybe the graph of tangent, but she’s already on the up and up side of things, into quadrant one and it just keeps climbing.

The graph of pain is nonexistent, Emily reminds herself. Because math makes sense, if not to her then at least to someone, but this pain isn’t measurable, doesn’t follow any type of pattern or equation. If x equals time passed, then y…

Why did Beca leave?

Emily plays it over in her head in the weeks after. She knows why Beca left. Or she knows why Beca said she was leaving.

_I can’t breathe here. You’re suffocating me. Your expectations are too high, Emily, I’m not the person you think I am._

But why did Beca _leave_?

What was the last straw? Was it the looks Emily would give her, disappointed and confused, when Beca would snap at some lowly intern? Was Emily just too much? Too much in her feelings, too much in her body, too much in wanting to just _be_.

Beca had wanted a career and success. She wanted people to know her by name, to hear a song and say _this is by Beca Mitchell, isn’t it amazing_? Beca had wanted to _be_ the music.

Emily had just wanted Beca.

In her head, Emily did everything right. She’d supported Beca, would have gone to the ends of the earth to help Beca achieve her dreams.

But Beca had trouble letting her in, had always seemed irritated when Emily would try to help.

_I can do it on my own_ , Beca had said once.

_Fine_ , Emily had snapped back.

Beca had the decency to look guilty about it, and she made it up to Emily later, with apologies and softness and whispered words into the dark.

_I don’t know why I said that,_ she’d murmured into Emily’s neck when she’d thought Emily was asleep. _I couldn’t have done any of this without you, and maybe that scares me_.

Emily thinks that wasn’t true. She thinks Beca could achieve everything she’d wanted without Emily by her side, but she hoped that Beca didn’t want to.

She guesses she was wrong.

Sometimes Emily had let her frustrations take over, too. She doesn’t want to pretend she’s blameless.

_You never let me in! We’ve been together for two years and you still can’t let me in. Sometimes it’s like I don’t know you, and the only way I can try to know you is to listen to your music like everybody else!_

She’d stormed off in anger, slamming their bedroom door behind her. And she’d felt guilty. It’s not like Beca didn’t share things with her. She did, in her roundabout ways where her feelings shone through when it seemed like what she was talking about was something completely different. Emily had become well-versed in understanding this code, and she realized that maybe Beca just wasn’t sure how to express herself in the same ways Emily did, and that was okay.

_God_ , Emily thinks. _God, I miss her so much_.

Some days the pain begins to fade. Some days Emily finds herself smiling and laughing and momentarily forgetting she’s supposed to be hurting. But then she’ll want to share it with Beca, want to feel the rush of pleasure she’d get when Beca would look at her with so much love.

It’s these times it hurts the most, like a punishment for forgetting she was supposed to be hurting at all.

Stacie comes calling sometimes, her voice concerned when she waltzes into their - no, _Emily’s_ \- apartment without knocking.

_Emily, why isn’t the door locked? Someone could break in._

Emily doesn’t want to tell her it’s because she’s taken to leaving it unlocked and unlatched, because when she’d left, Beca hadn’t taken her key, and Emily still hopes she might come back.

Sometimes Emily feels an anger surging inside her, and she thinks if Beca were to come back, she’d slam the door in her face, make her feel the kind of pain Emily’s feeling.

But she knows she wouldn’t. She knows if Beca came back, Emily would let her in, would put the kettle on and sit on the couch and let Beca talk her way back into Emily’s heart.

So much of her wishes for that to happen every day, even if it means fights and cold shoulders and the hardest time of her life.

_Come back_ , Emily wishes every night, on shooting stars and 11:11 and eyelashes she finds on her cheeks. _Please come back_.

Beca doesn’t.

Emily begins to move on.

She goes out. She embraces a part of her that hasn’t been awake since she’d been with Beca, the part that thinks baristas and bartenders are cute, the part that wonders how it feels to dance with someone and feel a thrill in her chest.

( _They’re not Beca, they’re not Beca, they’re not -)_

She forgets about Beca. Sure, not entirely. She’s sure she never will, sure there’s no way to forget people who made an impact on you at all, sure that the echo of pain never truly goes away when you think about it.

But that’s what it becomes: an echo, background noise, whispers on the wind that begin to leave no impression.

She stops wishing for Beca to come home.

She goes home with other people.

She forgets to stop leaving the door unlatched, though, no matter how many times Stacie yells at her for it.

( _You didn’t forget, Emily, you still hope, you know you do, you know -)_

The graph of pain is nonexistent, but perhaps it’s closest to a rational graph, even if pain isn’t. Perhaps she can separate her pain into mirrored asymptotes, ones that never cross the x and y axis because if they don’t go over those, then she won’t have to constantly go over the idea of Beca as her _ex_ and _why_ that still doesn’t sound right in Emily’s brain.

Perhaps that’s why she finally starts locking the door again, why she takes Beca’s key off the hook and shuts it away in a drawer, why she stops sleeping on just her side of the bed and instead rolls into the middle.

Perhaps that’s why one night, there’s a knock on the door and why Emily’s not expecting anybody and why when she opens it, the sight of Beca knocks the wind from her chest.

The graph of pain is nonexistent, but perhaps it’s a perfect circle, one that infinitely comes back around, because when Emily looks at Beca standing there in the dim hallway, smiling weakly and looking as pretty as ever, Emily opens the door.

And perhaps that’s why when she lets Beca into her bed that night, she rolls back onto her side of the bed, and when her arm circles around Beca’s middle and Beca’s nose presses into her neck, Emily feels like Beca was never really gone at all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> u know the drill @ emilyjunk.tumblr.com :)


End file.
